'Survivor' Plays the Race Card

"Survivor: Cook Islands" opens its season Thursday night, and in a first for the show, the players will initially be divided into groups based on their ethnicity.

Perhaps you've heard something about that.

CBS and the show's producers announced late last month that the show would begin with the 20 players divided into four teams based on race: African-American, Hispanic, Caucasian and Asian-American. Since then, a steady stream of skepticism about the race-based divisions has flowed both from TV critics and activist groups and politicians wary that the show will only end up reinforcing stereotypes.

"Survivor" host Jeff Probst isn't exactly surprised by the controversy, but he does hope people actually watch the show now that they've passed judgment on it.

"I think when most people hear the idea, their first reaction is to flinch a little bit. It is a sensitive topic, and we understand that," he says. "I think there are some who are probably very familiar with 'Survivor' and still just don't think it's a good idea. That's a fair and valid opinion.

"I also think ... there are a lot of people who've never seen 'Survivor' and have absolutely no idea what they're condemning, but are using it as a platform for their own agenda. I hope all the people who have their megaphones out, condemning the show before they've even seen a minute of it, will be just as vocal when it's over. If you still don't like it after you've seen it, shout it out. But if it surprises you or if your expectations were reversed, I hope you'll be just as vocal."

For his part, Probst, a self-described "white guy from Wichita," found "Cook Islands" an eye-opening experience. "It's completely changed my perspective about how I view other ethnicities, not in terms of judging them, but in terms of understanding that it's okay to not know something, it's okay to ask a question, because I'm not from that world."

By way of example, he says he met a colleague of his dentist recently who is Asian-American. "I found myself, without even thinking about it, asking 'Where are you from? Where's your family from?'" Probst says. "And he said, 'Oh, we're Korean.'

"The only reason I even had the courage to ask that question ... was because I'd just spent 39 days with some people from Korea and learned a little bit about the fact that Asia has Chinese and Japanese and Korean and Vietnamese, and they don't necessarily get along, and there's a hierarchy within that culture. It's stuff that maybe I should know as a human being who's lived 44 years, but I really wasn't comfortable. I would have felt like I was gonna say something stupid if I asked the wrong question."

"Survivor" has taken hits in the past for its relatively monochromatic casts, and "Cook Islands" is partly a response to that criticism. Probst says the overwhelming majority of applicants to the show -- 85 percent, he estimates -- are white, so casting directors actively recruited potential contestants in minority communities this time around. At the start, the goal was just to assemble a diverse group of players, but he says the contestants themselves helped lead producers to the idea of dividing the teams by ethnicity.

In talking with potential contestants -- Probst particularly recalls hearing this from contestant Cecilia Mansilla, a native of Peru -- "we started to realize that her life is steeped in a culture that's different from ours, certainly from mine. That's when the idea came: Maybe we should go with a positive thing of ethnic pride. Let people figure out who to vote off from their own tribe, where in a sense all things are equal unless you have differences within your culture, which we discovered existed."

Another side effect of recruiting people who hadn't previously applied to be on "Survivor," Probst says, was that a number of players weren't overly familiar with the game, which meant that people were playing more by feel than what they'd watched on TV for the past five years.

"These aren't seasoned players," he says. "The understand instinctively that it's very important to not necessarily tell the person you're voting out that you're voting them out. It kind of reminded me why it's good sometimes to have people who don't know the game that well play it."

For all the talk of ethnic pride and divisions by race, though, this is still "Survivor." At some point, the tribes will merge and the remaining players will be looking for a way to get to the end of the game, either with our without their original teammates.

"There are a lot of reasons why you might stick with someone," Probst notes, citing friendship, romantic connections, strategy and, yes, race as factors. "Adding the division by ethnicity is just one more reason why you might stick together, but I think you'll have to watch to find out if it's any more compelling a reason."